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Platform: Nintendo
DS
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Brain
Age
After
tearing up the sales charts in Japan for almost a year now,
English-speaking DS owners can finally look forward to Nintendo’s
brain training game getting a North American release.
Being released over here as Brain Age, players will be
faced with a variety of puzzles, quizzes, and other activities to challenge
one’s gray matter, as players see whether their brain is young or old.
Originally
released as a series of books in Japan by Professor Ryuta
Kawashima, a prominent neurologist at Tohoku University in Japan, the
game runs players through a number of drills to see just how sharp they
are. One example has
players being presented with a variety of words, but players have to say
what color the writing is in into the DS’ built-in microphone, not
what the word is.
The tricky part comes from the words being the names of various
colors. So, if the word
says “blue” but it is written with red letters the correct answer is to
say, “Red”.
Players will also be able to test their brains against various math and logic puzzles, as well as reading literature aloud, and drawing pictures. The game will even have a sudoku |
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mini-game
included. If you have never
heard of the puzzle game, sudoku, you can read all about it right
here.
There’s
a lot of content in Brain Age, and the way the game encourages players
to hone their skills, and continue to exercise their mind should add
greatly to its replay value. In
many ways the title is attempting to not just be a game, but a tool to
help people keep their wits sharp, yet it doesn’t come across as
“edutainment” software.
What has really attributed to the Brain Training games’ success in Japan is that it appeals to such a broad audience. There are quite |
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a
few people out there that enjoy games, but they just can’t relate to
the content in games like Grand Theft Auto, or Soul Calibur.
Many from grade school right up to seniors very much enjoy the
puzzles presented in the brain trainging games in Japan.
It will be interesting to see if Brain Age becomes just as big of
a phenomenon when it hit North America in mid April of this year.
Mr. Nash February 13, 2006
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